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Just way in over his head. I still think he's going to walk away after this season before his coaching reputation is permanently destroyed. He still acts like none of this is his or the coaching staff's fault.

He's just not a good enough coach to turn this thing around. He wasn't going to get buy in unless the team met with early success and wins and now the coaches think its the players fault while the players think its the coaches fault. Everybody needs to go.

I think you've nailed it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soundwave

The most disheartening thing about this is Eakins basically got a second chance here to run another training camp in effect over the Olympic break and get the guys to buy in to whatever system it is that he has, and taking in what he's learned about the team ... yet they come out and play some of the worst hockey of the year.

Eakins loves these low scoring games and is coaching for them. Then he complains that we are not scoring enough. Idiot. Look at the team you have.

more to the point Eakins complaining about the Oilers not scoring screwed up the entire topsix in the Minny game and put out lines I would never put out because Hemsky doesn't have chemistry with Gagner, ever, and Yak doesn't have it with Nuge and Hall.
He then buries Perron on the 3rd line.

Results in the Oil getting shutout.

Next game he puts Perron with second line, where there has been some chemistry, and Perron scores.
But why your best goal scorer and pretty clearly the best forward was playing on the 3rd line is anybodies guess.

The most disheartening thing about this is Eakins basically got a second chance here to run another training camp in effect over the Olympic break and get the guys to buy in to whatever system it is that he has, and taking in what he's learned about the team ... yet they come out and play some of the worst hockey of the year.

This team has completely tuned him out.

We'll see how things continue to go but I can't see how anybody (yes, I'm talking to you Craig Mactavish) can look at the complete lack of effort in the last two games and not see that what they're doing and the direction the coaching is taking them isn't getting them any where. Nobody expected a miracle from this team but it wasn't too much to expect them to play with some passion and actually try to play hard. Even buffalo has come out of the break by winning three in a row. This team just looks dead. Something seriously isn't working here. If Mactavish doesn't revamp the entire coaching staff OR start making a bunch of "bold" trades involving some previously thought of untouchables then he is even more useless than Tambellini was. This organization can't go to training camp with the same make up as what we see now. The deletions of Hemsky and Gagner alone aren't remotely close enough to fixing the problem.

I am really, really impressed with our GM. Every signing and trade he's done has been just great, and there have been quite a few of them. When you look at who was moved out and who was brought in, the team has been clearly upgraded. I know that even MacT admitted that he didn't do everything the team needed, but with the changes on the team already we should be a .500 team.

Eakins has no excuses. We should be better. We haven't been hit by injuries very hard. Lots of teams miss a couple of players here and there.

MacT hiring Eakins was not a bad move though. Krueger had to go. Eakins was sought after and his coaching style probably has a lot of what this team needed. Changing a coach is a bit of a crapshoot though. It's hard to tell if the total package will work out. I like that MacT stood up for his coach too and is willing to give him some more slack.

I am really, really impressed with our GM. Every signing and trade he's done has been just great, and there have been quite a few of them. When you look at who was moved out and who was brought in, the team has been clearly upgraded. I know that even MacT admitted that he didn't do everything the team needed, but with the changes on the team already we should be a .500 team.

Eakins has no excuses. We should be better. We haven't been hit by injuries very hard. Lots of teams miss a couple of players here and there.

MacT hiring Eakins was not a bad move though. Krueger had to go. Eakins was sought after and his coaching style probably has a lot of what this team needed. Changing a coach is a bit of a crapshoot though. It's hard to tell if the total package will work out. I like that MacT stood up for his coach too and is willing to give him some more slack.

Help me out here because I'm missing your point. You think Mac T is doing a great job and all the blame falls on Eakins yet you're praising Mac T for sticking with him. I don't get it. What or how is this going to get better?

I am really, really impressed with our GM. Every signing and trade he's done has been just great, and there have been quite a few of them. When you look at who was moved out and who was brought in, the team has been clearly upgraded. I know that even MacT admitted that he didn't do everything the team needed, but with the changes on the team already we should be a .500 team.

Eakins has no excuses. We should be better. We haven't been hit by injuries very hard. Lots of teams miss a couple of players here and there.

MacT hiring Eakins was not a bad move though. Krueger had to go. Eakins was sought after and his coaching style probably has a lot of what this team needed. Changing a coach is a bit of a crapshoot though. It's hard to tell if the total package will work out. I like that MacT stood up for his coach too and is willing to give him some more slack.

??? Firing Krueger was a massive disaster. If he was going to risk banking on a rookie, it should of been him.

Help me out here because I'm missing your point. You think Mac T is doing a great job and all the blame falls on Eakins yet you're praising Mac T for sticking with him. I don't get it. What or how is this going to get better?

Sorry after reading that I realize that it is confusing it is as I wrote it.

Firing Krueger was right. The faults in his system were well publicized, and his focus on special teams had no future for a playoff team. In hindsight, Eakins was not the right replacement. It's not a great move for MacT, but an understandable one. Doing a knee-jerk firing mid-season would only make it worse though.

Even if firing Eakins is a real option, MacT's got to put up a supportive face to the public to give him the best chance to figure this mess out.

Sorry after reading that I realize that it is confusing it is as I wrote it.

Firing Krueger was right. The faults in his system were well publicized, and his focus on special teams had no future for a playoff team. In hindsight, Eakins was not the right replacement. It's not a great move for MacT, but an understandable one. Doing a knee-jerk firing mid-season would only make it worse though.

Even if firing Eakins is a real option, MacT's got to put up a supportive face to the public to give him the best chance to figure this mess out.

Special teams are huge in the playoffs.

Krueger wants a team that battles hard at es and keeps the scoring chances against down, and then plays even harder on the pp to generate offense.

How does an underdog like Switzerland compete against Canada in hockey? Keep the scoring chances down at es and then make sure that you execute on the pp to generate your scoring chances.

Krueger took over an underdog nhl team and managed to get huge improvements out of them with no TC, playing against western conference teams all season long. Eakins is .500 against the east and .320 against the west.

Krueger wants a team that battles hard at es and keeps the scoring chances against down, and then plays even harder on the pp to generate offense.

How does an underdog like Switzerland compete against Canada in hockey? Keep the scoring chances down at es and then make sure that you execute on the pp to generate your scoring chances.
Krueger took over an underdog nhl team and managed to get huge improvements out of them with no TC, playing against western conference teams all season long. Eakins is .500 against the east and .320 against the west.

I'd also like to add that without an off season and minimal practice time between games (compressed schedule) it was probably hard to create and refine an ideal system. I believe he said he had plans for the summer.

I think with team improvements and appropriate time to work on things he would of been good.

I'd also like to add that without an off season and minimal practice time between games (compressed schedule) it was probably hard to create and refine an ideal system. I believe he said he had plans for the summer.

I think with team improvements and appropriate time to work on things he would of been good.

Agreed. It's hard to imagine that the team wouldn't have gotten a bit better with another year of Krueger. Hall became a >1 ppg player under Krueger and he and RNH were both plusses last year. Gagner had his best season ever, Yakupov was starting to score a lot of goals at the end of last season. Eberle was the only young gun to take a step backwards last season, but that was a step back from 76 points in 78 games. It's hard to maintain that level of play in the nhl. And like so many people have mentioned, all this happened against a steady diet of western teams. Eberle tailing off a bit when the competition was that much tougher isn't an epic fail.

This year the young guns are all going backwards, and they are the core of this team. When that many players with that much potential all start a downward curve at such a young age it's a huge red flag and I can't believe this experiment is being allowed to continue.

Agreed. It's hard to imagine that the team wouldn't have gotten a bit better with another year of Krueger. Hall became a >1 ppg player under Krueger and he and RNH were both plusses last year. Gagner had his best season ever, Yakupov was starting to score a lot of goals at the end of last season. Eberle was the only young gun to take a step backwards last season, but that was a step back from 76 points in 78 games. It's hard to maintain that level of play in the nhl. And like so many people have mentioned, all this happened against a steady diet of western teams. Eberle tailing off a bit when the competition was that much tougher isn't an epic fail.

This year the young guns are all going backwards, and they are the core of this team. When that many players with that much potential all start a downward curve at such a young age it's a huge red flag and I can't believe this experiment is being allowed to continue.

Eberle had the hand injury last year, still pretty productive despite the fact that he had trouble shooting.

No such issues this year, Eakins is a disaster on every aspect of this team.

The more the season goes on, the more you sense that Eakins is just completely lost. As in, he has no idea what to do.

It really seems he's out of ideas. He tried to implement his system (Remember the "It might take 30-40 games for players to understand Eakins system") and that didn't seem to work. He tweaked it, that didn't seem to work. Now he's just throwing out random things (line combos for example) to see what sticks. He seems completely and utterly lost.

To top it all off, he can't seem to motivate the players anymore. Most of our big guys are ready to hit the range.

We'll see what MacT does, but 'backing your guy' seems to be the only justification he has to keep Eakins. Continuity be damned, when the whole damn team looks 1000x worse than previous years(not just under Ralph imo), this is not the droid we're looking for. I don't care how many coaches we've hired, it's not a numbers game, it's get the right coach game. That's what matters.

so the general idea is lets fire another coach. after everyone was begging for the oilers to stick with someone. wow how the flip flop is swift

how about we finally realize that we have bred a culture of apathy in the oilers room by firing coach after coach. we have told the players that "hey dont like the coach, perform bad and he will get fired" this lets the players completely off the hook. instead how about the team does the hard thing and get rid of its under performing players. let the players know that if they dont want to play their hardest, they wont be playing for this team. edmonton management has to stop being paralyzed that they will give away the best player. cause guess what, its not working with what we have now. if we have lose an eberle or a yak for someone who is a little less skilled but competes like a mother and and brings something different, i say do it.

peter chiarelli has stated multiple times that he looks for character guys above anything else. skaters that will do anything for the team. and that shows in how the bruins play. what do we have in edmonton. we have Nuge and hall getting in scrums, while petry and belov look to the sky and stay away. that is unacceptable.

its has to come to the realization that we need to start moving out player who wont play for the coach instead of trying to continually find the "right" coach for the players

so the general idea is lets fire another coach. after everyone was begging for the oilers to stick with someone. wow how the flip flop is swift

how about we finally realize that we have bred a culture of apathy in the oilers room by firing coach after coach. we have told the players that "hey dont like the coach, perform bad and he will get fired" this lets the players completely off the hook. instead how about the team does the hard thing and get rid of its under performing players. let the players know that if they dont want to play their hardest, they wont be playing for this team. edmonton management has to stop being paralyzed that they will give away the best player. cause guess what, its not working with what we have now. if we have lose an eberle or a yak for someone who is a little less skilled but competes like a mother and and brings something different, i say do it.

peter chiarelli has stated multiple times that he looks for character guys above anything else. skaters that will do anything for the team. and that shows in how the bruins play. what do we have in edmonton. we have Nuge and hall getting in scrums, while petry and belov look to the sky and stay away. that is unacceptable.

its has to come to the realization that we need to start moving out player who wont play for the coach instead of trying to continually find the "right" coach for the players

I think good coaches don't grow on trees and you fire them until you find one who works with the team. Consistency is a poor excuse to keep around ineptness. You don't have to be the Bruins to win games in the NHL and you certainly don't need to convert each player into Bergerons.

Uh huh. Maybe good coaches don't grow on trees and bad ones are a dime a dozen and you go through them until you find one that can work with the group you have and create systems to their strengths and stop trying to convert every play into Bergerons when they aren't and don't have to be.

They don't have to be Bergerons.

Doesn't mean they can't try and defend once in awhile. Watching them coast back is embarrassing. Hall will never make TC as long as he keeps coasting.

Nobody can get through to these guys, but let's give them another free pass.

Two players have shown improvement since September -- Gazdic and Marincin. The rest are either about the same or worse. Tell me again how the coaching staff is causing the group to improve as a whole or as individuals.